Monday, August 3, 2015

"...[Sinclair] tells the story of her grandfather’s life thematically, reassembling it from several vantage points. And in telling that tale she also recounts her own discovery of a part of her heritage she previously had chosen to ignore." from a review by Judy Bolton-Fasman in the Boston Globe 10/11/14
Anne Sinclair’s maternal grandfather, Paul Rosenberg, was a major Parisian art dealer before and after World War II. Like other Jewish owners of objects of value, his art work was both “officially” confiscated by the Nazis as well as looted. Many of the artists Rosenberg represented were creators of what Hitler called "degenerate art." Sinclair writes this memoir to explain who her grandfather was, what happened to the art he owned during the war, and how he and other family members went about trying to retrieve it.

Sinclair understands the delicate nature of her undertaking, She makes the important point that what happened to her family pales in comparison to what happened to others who lost their lives. Her well-connected, large extended family managed to get passports and visas out of the country. Alfred Barr of the Museum of Modern Art in New York sponsored Paul Rosenberg’s immigration to the U.S. Rosenberg fled with his family through Spain to Portugal, to New York City where he established another art gallery.

Much of this memoir has to do with Rosenberg’s relationships to the artists he nurtured and promoted– most prominently Picasso. The author explains how he worked with his artists, often buying paintings outright so that the artists had more or less steady income. When the family felt they needed to leave France, he hid his art in safe deposit boxes and in homes in the countryside where he had been living before they fled. He had already sent some art to England and to the U.S. for safe-keeping.

The story Sinclair tells about finding and retrieving the art after the war is sadly familiar. Much of it on the continent was gone. Investigations revealed that many businessmen collaborated with the Nazis and many of them went unpunished. Stolen art changed hands, landed in private collections and museums and no one seemed to care. After much inquiring and searching on the family’s part they retrieved all but about 60 of 400 paintings, many of which the family has since donated to museums. Sinclair is particularly fond of a work painted by Picasso in 1918 of her grandmother with her mother sitting on her lap which now hangs at the Musee Picasso in France.

Family
Author’s mother/s family
Alexandre Rosenberg – married Mathilde Jellinek
Paul Rosenberg – son of Alexandre and Mathilde; married Marguerite Loevi
Micheline Rosenberg – daughter of Paul and Marguerite; married Robert Schwartz (Sinclair)
Anne Rosenberg – daughter of Micheline and Robert
Alexandre Rosenberg – son of Paul and Marguerite; married Elaine
Elisabeth and Marianne Rosenberg – daughters of Alexandre and Elaine
Leonce Rosenberg – son of Alexandre and Mathilde
Lucienne Rosenberg – daughter of Leonce

To read an article in the New York Times about the Post War effort to retrieve the art, click here.
To read an article about an on-going saga about an art collection left after the war in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, click here.

"[W]hen I was much younger . . . even then I would wonder what kind of present you could possibly have without knowing the stories of your past." Daniel Mendelsohn, The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million

Welcome

My name is Toby Anne Bird and I've been interested in memoirs for many years. I teach courses on autobiographical writing in New York, and I'm an amateur genealogist. I've created this blog to call attention to the many compelling memoirs about Jewish people, their communities, their history and their culture.

Genealogy and history are more than facts and figures. Memoirs help bring those facts and figures to life because they are eye-witness accounts that immerse their readers in lives lived. These primary sources help you understand life on the ground, so to speak - a time period, a geographical location, and/or a particular set of circumstances.

The memoirs that I post on this blog are ones I've read and recommend. Each post consists of a short review of the contents and is followed by lists of family names and geographical locations of interest to those involved in Jewish genealogy. I will occasionally also be posting documentaries and fiction that can enrich a genealogical or historical perspective.

I hope that lots of you out in cyberspace will find this blog useful. I expect in the beginning to post three times a week - on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, one memoir per post. I welcome your feedback, suggestions, and questions. This blog went live on 3/1/2010.

Toby Anne Bird, Ph.DYou can leave comments on the blog or e-mail me at toby.bird@ncc.edu.

4/12/2010: I now have posted reviews on 30 books and documentaries. I will now be adding reviews twice a week on Mondays and Thursdays instead of three times a week.

7/19/10: I now have now posted reviews of more than 50 books and documentaries. I will now be adding reviews once a week on Mondays.

9/5/11: I now have posted reviews of more than 100 books and documentaries. I will now be adding reviews twice a month on the first and third Mondays.

5/31/14: I now have posted reviews of more than 170 books and documentaries. I will now be adding reviews once a month on the first Monday.

11/6/15: This blog will be on partial hiatus. If I read a memoir that I think should be added, I'll add it. It's been a five year run.

Search This Blog

Blog Table of Contents: Alphabetical List of Reviews Posted

Abramovich and Zilberg, Smuggled in Potato Sacks: Fifty stories of the Hidden Children of the Kaunas Ghetto

Aciman, Out of Egypt

Adorjan, An Exclusive Love

Alban, Anya's War

Antin, The Promised Land: The Autobiography of a Russian Immigrant

Appelfeld, My Life

Apple, I Love Gootie: My Grandmother's Story

Apple, Roomates: My Grandfather's Story

Auster, Invention of Solitude

Bauer (director), The Ritchie Boys (documentary film)

Beer's The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust

Behar, An Island Called Home: Returning to Jewish Cuba

Bendavid-Val, The Heavens Are Empty: Discovering the Lost Town of Trochenbrod

Benjamin, Last Days in Babylon: The History of a Familly, The Story of a Nation

Berg, Diary of Mary Berg: Growing up in the Warsaw ghetto

Berger, Displaced Persons: Growing Up American After the Holocaust

Bernstein H., The Dream

Bernstein H., The Invisible Wall

Bernstein, B. Family Matters: Sam, Jennie and the kids

Bernstein, S., The Seamstress: A Memoir of Survival

Berr, The Journal of Helene Berr

Bitton-Jackson, I Have Lived a Thousand Years: Growing up in the Holocaust

Bloom, Out of a Doll's House

Brenner, The Girls of Room 28: Friendship, Hope, and Survival in Theresienstadt

Brittain and Spotton (writer/director) Memorandum (documentary film)

Buergenthal, A Lucky Child: A memoir of surviving Auschwitz as a young boy

Subscribe via email

Interesting Articles

My Blog List

Potentially Useful Books that are more Histories, than Memoirs - not reviewed.

Eliach, There Once Was a World: A 900-year Chronicle of the Shtetl of Eishyshok, 1998. A National Book Award Finalist that recreates and documents the author's hometown shtetl in Lithuania that is the basis for the permanent exhibit called the "Tower of Life" at the U.S. Holocaust Museum.

Evans, The Provincials: A Personal History of Jews in the South, 1973. A classic study of its subject, only intermittently autobiographical. The author grew up in Durham, North Carolina.

Margoshes, A World Apart: A Memoir of Jewish Life in Nineteenth Century Galicia, published in Yiddish in 1936; published in English in 2008. A very useful book written in a lively manner about life in Galicia which includes discussions of the Hassidic dynasties and other rabbinic authorities and their rivalries, the world of work beyond the realm of the synagogue, and the day to day life of the author's family.

Ringelblum, Notes from the Warsaw Ghetto: The Journal of Emmanuel Ringelbaum, 1958. A day by day documenting of life and death in the Warsaw ghetto and what Ringelblum, a social historian and archivist of the ghetto, heard about the war outside the ghetto.